Most active cities for social media list could be useful for nonprofit fundraising

Nonprofit fundraising is slowly but surely growing online in terms of donations, but certainly when it comes to using social media to interact with your donor base the opportunities are growing quickly week to week. Therefore I found a new study published by Men’s Health magazine to be quite fascinating as it looks at which US cities (per capita) are using social media most frequently. The disparity in the results certainly can make a difference to a smaller nonprofit that is particularly active within a specific city or region, some cities are far more ‘connected’ than others and if you’re operating in a market where social media is really buzzing then it’s important to devote your energies in the same realm.

How the magazine went about compiling a list is almost as interesting to me as the actual results which I’ve included below. They factored in each of the big three as I like to call them (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) and also looked at network traffic for some of the other contenders based upon location. The formula looked at evaluating the Facebook and LinkedIn users per capita and then also added a ratio of twitter usage per city based upon the NetProspex marketing database. These three combined would give a strong indicator of the level of social media use per city but they also added computations that included MySpace, Reddit, Digg and Friendster (that’s still active?) To generate an overall social media score per city and assign a grade to it, I must say the overall results were somewhat surprising to me especially a number of the cities that made the top 10 while some notable giants like New York and Chicago ranked near the middle of the pack.

So does this data actually matter? It probably depends upon who you ask, but what is true is that the Facebook app ‘Causes’ raised more than $12 million in contributions last year whilst online giving grew to somewhere around five or six percent of all fundraising donations for 2010, a ratio that all industry analysts seem to agree is set to rise consistently over the coming years. Particularly interesting are the rankings of the largest five cities in the nation which may be the opposite of what you expected: New York was 53rd, Los Angeles 33rd, Chicago 39th, Houston 48th and Phoenix 34th leaving only San Francisco to rank in the top 12 in both population and social media use. I’m sure we’ll see more reports of this kind in the future but it’s a good gauge as to which regions are most quickly gravitating towards using these tools to interact on a regular basis.

Here is the list of the ‘Most Socially Networked’ cities according to Men’s Health, come on El Paso get with the program!

1 Washington, DC     A+
2 Atlanta, GA     A+
3 Denver, CO     A+
4 Minneapolis, MN     A+
5 Seattle, WA     A+
6 San Francisco, CA     A
7 Orlando, FL     A
8 Austin, TX     A
9 Boston, MA     A
10 Salt Lake City, UT     A-

11 Cincinnati, OH    A-
12 Raleigh, NC    A-
13 Burlington, VT    A-
14 Portland, OR    B+
15 Madison, WI    B+
16 Dallas, TX    B+
17 Portland, ME    B
18 Sacramento, CA    B
19 Aurora, CO    B
20 Boise, ID    B
21 Charlotte, NC    B
22 Wilmington, DE    B
23 Oakland, CA    B
24 St. Louis, MO    B
25 Las Vegas, NV    B
26 Columbus, OH    B
27 San Diego, CA    B
28 San Jose, CA    B
29 St. Paul, MN    B-
30 Plano, TX    B-
31 Tampa, FL    B-
32 Nashville, TN    B-
33 Los Angeles, CA    B-
34 Phoenix, AZ    B-
35 Newark, NJ    B-
36 Miami, FL    B-
37 Norfolk, VA    C+
38 Richmond, VA    C+
39 Chicago, IL    C+
40 Durham, NC    C+
41 Colorado Springs, CO    C+
42 Des Moines, IA    C+
43 Jersey City, NJ    C+
44 Indianapolis, IN    C+
45 Milwaukee, WI    C+
46 Fargo, ND    C+
47 Columbia, SC    C+
48 Houston, TX    C+
49 Philadelphia, PA    C+
50 Birmingham, AL    C+
51 Cleveland, OH    C+
52 Kansas City, MO    C
53 New York, NY    C
54 Greensboro, NC    C
55 Reno, NV    C
56 Manchester, NH    C
57 Providence, RI    C
58 Baltimore, MD    C
59 Little Rock, AR    C
60 Louisville, KY    C
61 Sioux Falls, SD    C-
62 Omaha, NE    C-
63 Pittsburgh, PA    C-
64 Baton Rouge, LA    C-
65 Lexington, KY    C
66 Wichita, KS    C-
67 Anchorage, AK    C-
68 Lincoln, NE    C-
69 Cheyenne, WY    D+
70 New Orleans, LA    D+
71 Tucson, AZ    D+
72 Buffalo, NY    D+
73 Honolulu, HI    D+
74 Santa Ana, CA    D+
75 Charleston, WV    D+
76 Oklahoma City, OK    D+
77 Virginia Beach, VA    D+
78 Winston-Salem, NC    D+
79 Tulsa, OK    D+
80 Albuquerque, NM    D
81 Fort Worth, TX    D
82 San Antonio, TX    D
83 Jackson, MS    D
84 Chesapeake, VA    D
85 Jacksonville, FL    D
86 Riverside, CA    D
87 Memphis, TN    D-
88 St. Petersburg, FL    D-
89 Toledo, OH    D-
90 Corpus Christi, TX    D-

91 Billings, MT    D-
92 Fort Wayne, IN    D-
93 Bridgeport, CT    D-
94 Detroit, MI    D-
95 Fresno, CA    F
96 Bakersfield, CA    F
97 Lubbock, TX    F
98 Stockton, CA    F
99 Laredo, TX    F
100 El Paso, TX    F

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